The Jonathan ambush

The idea of an ambush is military. It connotes surprise, and the executor of the ambush assumes the position of the superior, being the aggressor. President Goodluck Jonathan played the ambush man when he propounded the idea of a national conference. He seemed to have ambushed everybody. He set up a committee, sprinkled it with some progressives while also ladling it with his advocates and marionettes.

President Jonathan had turned his about-face into virtue. He who pooh-poohed the concept as subversive and unnecessary turned into the spearhead. The imitator had become the originator. He was not the author of the story, but he had become the narrator, the protagonist and the omniscient raconteur. He understood the power of surprise in a story, especially the modern novel. He acted as if he read Ian Watt, who theorised on the novel as a genre premised on surprise as weapon. He imposed surprise on the narrative and it caught everyone, especially the progressives, with their pants at the knee.

Other than that, he seemed to have read Harold Bloom, the author of the concept known as the anxiety of influence. That concept says the imitator so well emulates the original that the originator appears as the imitator. It is the ultimate fraud of identity. While it lasted, Jonathan was having the time of his opponents’ lives.

So, in starting off his national conference, the president wore two hats, one of a literary genius and the other of a military strategist. He was at once a Napoleon and a Dickens. He thought so for a few days and his men basked in the new intellectual and political glory. Even many progressives, who had thought that the Nigerian moment had come to talk itself out of its age-old illusions, found themselves pitching their tents with the helmsman of Aso Rock.

He turned out to be wearing false hats, an impostor in political fashion. The matter turned awry when he said the conference would report to the National Assembly. Suddenly, it became clear to many that the president alone understood what he meant by a national conference. The progressives abided the illusion of a sovereign conference. They thought that once the process began they would take the initiative from the president and his PDP viceroys, and Jonathan would lose control. They probably had history in mind, like the French Revolution when a mere meeting of the legislature turned into a conflagration of mass protests that torpedoed the system. Some groups had started unveiling their terms, and others started gearing to write their memorandums and positions. This was another ambush. They thought Jonathan, whom they often wrongly call clueless, would fall piteously into their traps.

How wrong! Jonathan did not know that the victim of the ambush would be none other than Jonathan himself. By saying that the conference would report to the National Assembly, he committed a grave error. He assumed that those who had supported him would just tag along like a sheep. He did not know that many would suddenly realise that he did not know that he could not fool us.

You can fool some of the people some of the time, crooned Abraham Lincoln, but you cannot fool all the people all the time. Some who supported him retraced their steps and started telling him, “sorry, no cigar.”

That is the story. What those who understand the concept of the national conference want its decision to be binding on everyone and every institution, including the National Assembly and the president. When such a parley begins, the people take charge of the nation. That is why it is a national conference. The progressives have often called it sovereign because they feel that every topic will be on the table, including the very survival of Nigeria as a nation. In fact, that would be the very first topic because on it hinges every other deliberation. The Jonathan administration set a trap by saying everything is on the table. How false. If everything is on the table, it will not be subjected to the wisdom of the National Assembly.

If the national Assembly would have to ratify the proceedings, then the legislature would assume that it (the National Assembly) is not a topic for deliberation. But the conference would have decided also how the legislature would work, how its members are elected, how the constituencies are delimited, what powers they should wield, their terms of office, and their sources of funding. If such a matter gets to the assembly, the report would be subjected to a committee. That committee of a few men would now impose its ideas and distortions on the submissions of persons elected all over the country. Again, they could be at the receiving end of lobbyists from different political, ethnic groups as well as business moguls. At the end of it, the result will be a shadow of what the people’s representatives decided. It would look like the story of the Christian Reformation in Europe. The Reformation was mocked by historians who noted that Erasmus laid the egg but Martin Luther hatched it. But Erasmus said the colour of the bird was different from what he intended.

Yet, once the National Assembly completes the job, the president must give his assent. The president and the lawmakers will become judges in their own causes. The presidency will also be a subject of the conference’s work. What if they curtail the president’s powers, what if they say the states will have more money than the centre and the police will no longer be at the beck and call of the centre? Ideally, once the conference begins sitting, all institutions, including the presidency must cede authority to the leadership of the conference. The president and governors become a little better than ciphers. That is how fundamental such a conference is.

So, President Jonathan exposed the philosophical vacuity of his conference. So what it means is that he does not really intend this to be a groundbreaking affair, but just a conference to keep us silent and divert attention.

Yet on the flipside, one cannot assume that convoking a conference will be easy. We cannot assume that voting the people into the conference may not be rigged or controversial. One cannot assume that the deliberations would not hit deadlocks or whether even after the conference has finished its work, the referendum would not be swindled out of the people with a fraudulent vote counting. These will be challenges. But we need to give it a try, and see if the people will insist on their own sovereignty and reclaim their mandate if the referendum is rigged. The great Yale scholar and philosopher, Robert Hutchins said, “the death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.”

If soveriengn conference fails, then we can say the people ambushed themselves. But that will be a terminal ambush. We shall have assured ourselves that we have decided to rig ourselves as a people out of a future of progress. That is better than a rigmarole and cosmetic dance that Jonathan has placed on the Nigerian stage.

National Conference is not a matter to be approached in the cavalier attitude GEJ is accustomed to. besides, you don’t have to come here to read ”Mr Grammer” s articles, seeing how challenged you are intellectually. GEJ’s changes in direction have never being borne out of noble objectives.

zeezman

The Art of War……… “always utilise the element of surprise”

Tempest

This vegetarian Tiger is here too. Na wao. it appears u are unemployed. yet you are a die hard GEJ supporter. is it a curse?

Tonair

Thanks a million. Your point is clearly made. We have to give it a try. Lat us have the conference.

Albert A

Some of you will just kill yourselves bcos of GEJ. The foundation GEJ is laying in Nigeria today is far reassuring than any president before him. you criticize him unnecessarily for tribal reasons. do you know the statistic of graduates Nigeria produce yearly? how many jobs can only the govt create? what magic can any man perform that GEJ has not done compared to 50 yrs of Nigeria without direction?

if only you guys are really aware of the recent developments in Nigeria. Analise GEJ govt in any sector, be it POWER, AGRICULTURE, RAILWAYS, ROADS, AIRPORTS FOREIGN INVESTORS (that can lead to job creation) INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS. LETS BE SINCERE IN THIS COUNTRY FOR ONCE. BOKO HARAM Sponsored against his govt is being subdued.

Southwest and others called for national conference for many yrs, now that GEJ has agreed to your call, he is suddenly not sincere.

BigBlindCountry

I’m having a difficult time with your uses of the word “rule”. Nigeria needs a ruler like it needs a big hole in a small heart. What we need is a fair minded manager of the Nigeria whala, help to coordinate the affairs of all the different Nations within this geographical contraption falsely identified as a “Country”. There are too many Nations inside Nigeria to be ruled by anyone. No rulers please, just tenured managers. Forgive me I no wise at all.